“Head and Shoulders Above Others”: An Ethnography of a Man Wearing Makeup in a Local City in Japan

Abstract (English)

Since men have been considered as a representation of human beings while women are otherized, we need anthropologies of masculinities describing men as being gendered (Guttmann 2023; Scheibelhofer & Monterescu 2023). However, previous scholars on masculinities often naturalize categories of men and masculinities based on Western epistemologies (Oguchi 2024). Explored in this study is what it means to be a man in Japan by focusing on men’s makeup practice. As the anthropology of Japanese masculinities has been deeply interested in salarymen (Allison 1991; Dasgupta 2013), men’s makeup is interpreted as a metrosexual practice of white-collar men in urban cities, overlooking experiences of men using makeup in local contexts. The aim of this study is to examine what it means for a man to wear makeup in a local city through an ethnography of a man in his early 20s in Hokkaido, the northernmost prefecture in Japan. Motivated by online contents promoting self-help practice for heterosexual Japanese men, he has committed himself to weight training, hairstyling, skincare, and makeup. He polishes up his appearance to be “head and shoulders above others.” However, that doesn’t mean that he stands out with makeup. Rather, by applying a light foundation and drawing natural eyebrows, he makes himself up as if he is not wearing makeup at all. With limited access to other men using makeup and the latest cosmetics in his city, what keeps him using makeup is his economic hardship. For him, it seems easier to improve his appearance than to succeed in his career as an employee. With the collapse of the model of salarymen as breadwinners since the 1990s, his makeup is not to imitate metrosexual salarymen, but a way that makes him feel he can gain opportunities to succeed as a self-help man whose appearance is “head and shoulders above others.”